


Winter is Coming

by fragrantwoods



Category: Deadwood
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-29
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:15:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragrantwoods/pseuds/fragrantwoods





	Winter is Coming

_**Winter is Coming**_  


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 **Winter is Coming  
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They were most likely four weeks at best from the first big snowfall. Al Swearengen had hoped to partner with a few others to buy and prepare a winter pasture area, maybe encourage some of the people who moved out of Deadwood every winter to stick it out in town. He thought Bullock had identified a site in the weeks before the fire, but everyone’s attention was on rebuilding still. Al had weathered two Deadwood winters and thought this might be a money-maker…get the hoopleheads who were on the fence to see the possibility of staying.

The bank would need to come into play, though. Without knowing how this idea would fly, they’d need to figure how much feed, hay and the like to haul in, and get that moving. He grunted at the thought of having to get Bullock and Alma on the same side of something, but no way around it…Bullock had the horse expertise and Alma had the bank, more or less.

 _Alma_. That woman…she could be so fuckin’ flighty, and then get down to brass tacks with his whores on hygiene, comportment and the like. If Sofia’s friends’ parents noticed that Alma visited the Gem regular-like, they didn’t seem to be holding it against the child. And the whores were pulling in cleaner men with deeper pockets. He didn’t know where the low-paid and dirty went for pussy, and didn’t give a fuck. Cy Tolliver could keep on advertising “Chicago-style” girls. He was doing fine with spruced-up Deadwood style whores.

He wasn’t sure exactly _how_ Alma’s visits were classing up the girls, but nobody had pissed and moaned about the recent rate hike yet. And the girls weren’t wearing on his nerves as much as they used to. She could bring those fuckin’ ladies magazines and fancy soaps all day long, as long as it didn’t encourage anyone to sloth. Even with her visits, he still thought he saw “girl in” signs on the doors more often than he used to.

And she was taking their mind off Jen, as far as he could tell. Maybe not all the way, but enough so they didn’t give Trixie the cold shoulder and didn’t cry when he was amongst them. Truth be told, he looked forward to her visits upstairs. He had replaced a lot of his office furniture with duplicates, more or less, but some things didn't have easy substitutions. He missed the Chief helping him ponder the imponderables, may he finally rest in peace. There were times when he thought talking to Alma was a kind of substitute, although he thought it best to keep that to himself.

He had surprised the others with how much money he had been willing to spend on his bedroom. On a trip to buy goods from Rapid City, he had seen a fine high bed in a store window, carved upright posts forming an ornate headboard. Dan accepted his explanation of wanting something sturdy and of quality for the sake of his aging bones and back with a minimum of eye-rolling. After it was delivered and set up, he thought if you didn’t look out the window, you’d think you were in a regular city.

It seemed to intimidate Dolly…he could tell she preferred to service him in his office chair. After the fire, she hadn’t started back to sleeping in his bed, and he was fine not pressing the point. It was hell when she got weepy or having her time of the month, all moody and curled up with cramps. And he had a different image in his mind when he looked at the bed from his desk. He wondered if Dolly had noticed he angled his chair so he could see the heavy bed and think of the widow while she was working on him.

The  widow...there was another imponderable. He could imagine _fucking_ the widow okay, but damned if he could get a mental picture of what would be going on beforehand, what would get them across the eight feet or so between desk and bed. Cash changing hands or a reminder of who was boss were the only ways he personally knew of to get there. He snorted as the idea of asking Bullock for ideas came to mind. Probably involved fuckin’ flowers, a bunch of “oh, how I love you!”s and the like. He took a final look at the turning trees on the surrounding hillsides, and took his coffee indoors. Getting fuckin’ chilly anyway.  



End file.
